The Best Man to Trust - By Kerry Connor Page 0,33
a moment. “Actually, I think he liked her back in school,” he said thoughtfully. “But nothing ever came of it. I don’t think she was interested.” He shook his head. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“Do you remember if he was upset about it?”
“I doubt it. I hate to say it, but he was probably used to it. Back then, Alex never had much luck with girls. He was pretty awkward with them. It was that intensity thing. He would always get really serious and want to talk about issues and stuff like that. He seems a lot smoother now from what I can tell.” He smiled slightly. “Greg was always the ladies’ man of our group. And Scott was all about Rachel. Even after they broke up, he didn’t date much through the rest of college.”
“What about you?” she asked without thinking. “You weren’t a ladies’ man?”
Almost as soon as she asked the question, she wished she hadn’t. She sounded a little too interested.
If he noticed, he didn’t show it. He chuckled lightly, a touch of self-deprecation in the sound. “Not really. I dated a few girls, but nothing too serious. What Scott and Rachel had was nice, but I really wasn’t looking for anything like that. And I never met anybody who tempted me to change my mind.”
“You didn’t want to settle down,” she said, more of an observation than a question.
“No,” he agreed with a small smile. “I grew up in a small town in Minnesota. I wanted to get out there, see the world. Experience what’s out there.”
“And you did,” she said, matching his smile. She had to admire that about him. He was a man who’d had a dream and managed to fulfill it. How many people could say that at any age, let alone before the age of thirty?
“So what’s next for you?” she asked. “What do you want to do now?”
“I’m still figuring that out,” he admitted. “What about you? Do you keep in touch with people from school?”
She shrugged halfheartedly. “Not really. I didn’t have a lot of close friends back then. I guess I was kind of a loner. When I started seeing Brad, I kind of got swept up in his group, and after we graduated and got married, I lost touch with the few people I was close to.”
“How long were you married?”
“Four years,” she said softly.
“So you got married right out of college?”
“We lived together for a year first.” She frowned. “Did you really mean what you suggested at breakfast? You think Brad could be responsible?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Part of it was just trying to think of who might want to hurt you. Part of it was being tired of hearing about him and just plain not liking the guy.”
“You don’t even know him,” Meredith pointed out.
He looked at her, his expression solemn. “He hurt you,” he said gravely. “That’s reason enough.”
A curious warmth rolled through her at both the seriousness of the words and the intensity of his expression. It didn’t sound like he was simply being polite. It almost sounded personal.
“But you tell me,” he continued. “You know him better than I do. Do you think he could be involved in this?”
Meredith frowned, considering the question. She knew Brad had been angry about the divorce, in spite of everything he’d done. It was one reason she’d been glad to get away from Chicago, needing the physical distance between them. And she knew better than anyone he was capable of violence when he was angry. But to murder an innocent person just to get back at her? If anything it seemed more likely that he would take his anger out on her directly.
Of course, there was a time she never would have believed he’d ever hurt her. She was both an expert at knowing what Brad was capable of, and someone with a history of underestimating him.
“I don’t know,” she finally said. “It seems like a lot of trouble to go to in order to hurt me, instead of simply coming after me directly.”
“He must have been pretty bitter about your divorce, and still is, if he’s complaining about it over a year later.”
“He was,” she said quietly. “He tried to fight the divorce. At first, he swore that he loved me and he’d change. And when that didn’t work, he got furious and said that we’d made those vows until death. But all that did was remind me exactly why I needed to get away from